How I Disappear
by dysprositos
Summary: Rockstar AU. Bruce Banner is the troubled frontman of a newly popular rock band. Can he get his issues under control, or will they control him? The tour is on the line but there's so much more than music at stake.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello and welcome to the next project I'm probably going to abandon.**

**Warnings: child/spousal abuse, drug use.**

**My beta, bequirk, is the best as per usual.**

**Please note that I know nothing at all about being a rockstar, I just like writing silly stories.**

* * *

He could see the headlines already: "Rockstar trashes third hotel room in a year."

He wondered if this would be the straw that broke the camel's back, the incident that got them dropped from the tour and probably their record label.

Strangely...right now, he didn't care if it was.

With a sigh, Bruce picked himself up off the floor, ignoring the throbbing pain in his shoulders, ignoring the scrapes and bruises on his knuckles. He looked around, taking note of the broken lamp, the busted furniture. The blankets had been torn off the bed, the pillows ripped apart, the mattress left askew on the bed frame. The wallpaper had seen better days; before it had been neutral, clean, and neat, and now it was ripped and smeared with...

_Blood, probably, _Bruce thought with a glance at his hands.

The floor was littered with broken beer bottles and feathers, and Bruce stepped around the detritus carefully, making his way to the bathroom. There, at least, the chaos was minimal. The towels had found their way onto the floor, and there was vomit in the bathtub, and all the little orange pill bottles that he'd lined up so neatly on the vanity had been knocked into the sink, but overall? Not so bad.

After a moment of searching, he grabbed one of the bottles out the sink, opened it, and popped one of the pills in his mouth. With a rueful shake of his head, he swallowed it dry before setting the bottle down and clearing the rest of them out of the sink. Then, he splashed water on his face.

Finally, he had the courage to look in the mirror.

The damage wasn't so bad. The circles under his eyes were about as prominent as they always were. He had a bruise forming above his left eyebrow, and his hair was...terrible, but he'd seen worse.

Not since he'd been a kid, sure, but he'd seen worse.

With another sigh, Bruce turned and went back into the main part of the room. He dug around, gingerly avoiding broken glass, until he unearthed his phone. He wasn't surprised to see that it was well after noon, and that he had four missed phone calls. The most recent one had only been fifteen minutes ago, and Bruce looked at his phone for a solid minute before he pressed the "call" button.

"Hey," he said, as soon as the line was picked up. Then, "It happened again." He paused. "I think it's getting worse."

* * *

Bruce Banner had the distinction of being the first person in his family to fail out of college.

His father, Brian Banner, had been a prominent professor of physics. His mother, Rebecca, had been an English teacher, at least before she'd gotten married. She'd been a good one, too, if the dusty awards in the den had been anything to go by.

But Bruce and college didn't mesh.

If anyone had asked (which no one had), Bruce would have told them he suspected that it had _probably _had something to do with the fact his dad had murdered his mom in front of him, an unfortunate event that had occurred after years of steadily worsening abuse.

Not that he had proof that was it; he just had a feeling. In fact, Bruce felt that most of his issues in life had stemmed from this event.

In the case of college (as in the case of all his other issues, really), it was a reasonable assumption. His failure at college certainly hadn't been due to a lack of ability. When he was six, Bruce had scored in the 99th percentile on the IQ test the state had given all the kids in his grade. And while IQ tests certainly weren't always correlated with grades, in Bruce's case, he'd been very good at school.

For a short while, anyway.

After the results of the IQ test came in, though, things changed. Because Brian, who had always been distant at best and absent at worst, became suddenly hostile.

Violently so.

Bruce didn't understand it as a young child. In fact, he never got a good answer about why Brian was like he was. He asked his mother, but if she knew, she took the answer to her grave. It was one of many things that Bruce never understood, like why his parents had gotten married or why they had stayed together.

But all Bruce _had _known as a kid was that when he came home with gold stars and stickers, Brian didn't like it.

So Bruce stopped bringing them home.

That didn't have the desired effect, though; it was like a switch had been flipped, and from that point on, Brian always found a reason to criticize Bruce, and the criticism occasionally escalated to violence.

Eventually, "occasionally" became "sometimes," and "sometimes" became "often."

Rebecca did what she could to stop it, but that just got her hurt, too. And as the years passed, and Brian slowly became more unstable, more unbalanced, more angry, Bruce became adept at hiding bruises or explaining them away. And as Brian took things farther and farther, Bruce and Rebecca adapted to the new normal.

It was the adaptation, the normalization, Bruce thought, that eventually ruined them. The habit of bearing the unbearable leads to complacency.

So while it shouldn't have been a surprise that Brian would one day go too far, it was.

It was.

It had started with the usual stuff. Brian had been tearing into Bruce for being a "freak" and a "weirdo." Bruce had just gotten his SAT scores, and he'd managed a perfect score. Despite years of carefully maintaining a C average, Bruce hadn't wanted to blow the SAT, so he'd actually done his best for once. Unfortunately, his father had opened the envelope before Bruce had gotten home from school.

When Brian had started slapping and hitting Bruce, though, Rebecca had stepped in.

She did, usually, as much as Bruce tried to get her to stay out of it. She was too protective, though. And so she'd come out of her bedroom, frowning, and walked down the hall to the pair facing off at the top of the stairs. "Brian," she'd said, coming up behind them. "Brian, don't—"

Those had been her last words. Without even looking at her, Brian had turned and backhanded her roughly, casually, something he'd done a thousand times before. This time, though, the blow had caught her by surprise and she stumbled a single step backwards...and down the stairs.

She'd broken her neck.

Brian had gone to jail and, eventually, prison. Bruce had spent his senior year of high school in foster care. He'd applied to Harvard, partly as a joke, partly as a 'how far can I get away from here,' and even though his grades had been subpar, his shining, fucking perfect SAT score had gotten him in.

He lasted until his junior year.

The problem had been a combination of things. Years of deliberately slacking off had left Bruce without the ability to apply himself. Having no familial support meant he was on his own in terms of housing and living expenses, a hard burden for any young adult to bear, even with the the help of financial aid.

But mostly, Bruce had always thought, it was the fact that his father had killed his mother in front of him.

Or rather, that years of abuse culminating in massive trauma had left him emotionally broken and mentally unstable.

Bruce had...a small problem.

The first blackout had actually been during his senior year of high school, but Bruce hadn't known it was a blackout until much later, when he'd had a couple more. He'd been drinking with a couple of kids at some lame party that he'd managed to get invited to (doing people's homework made you pretty popular, apparently) and then...he'd been at home, in bed.

The second blackout was during his sophomore year of college. Bruce had been having a few illicit beers with some of the kids from his Chem 298 class and then...he'd been lying in someone's front yard, covered in vomit.

That one scared him, and he'd cut out all alcohol at that point.

But it wasn't the alcohol. He wasn't getting blackout drunk. It was something else.

He had two more blackouts before he put it together. It wasn't alcohol. It was anxiety.

It was stress. And at that point, Bruce decided he needed to stay calm at all costs. Because he couldn't keep blacking out, couldn't deal with that kind of blatant evidence of his own broken mind. He didn't want to think about it.

As a young adult with a history of trauma and no emotional support whatsoever, he'd done what anyone would do.

He'd found himself a dealer.

The first semester of his junior year of college, Bruce spent most of his time in a pleasant haze of Xanax and, when he could get it, Vicodin.

He failed all his classes and earned an impressive 0.00 GPA.

The winter semester of that year, Bruce had just stopped attending classes sometime around the end of February.

At that point, Harvard had decided that, perfect SAT or not, it was time that they and Bruce Banner parted ways.

So then, at 21 years old, Bruce had found himself adrift.

He got by for a while doing odd jobs, wandering up and down the East Coast, and eventually, when he was 23, he landed himself a job at a New York karaoke bar of all places.

One night, one of his coworkers was sick with what Bruce suspected was a norovirus, and Bruce was given the unpleasant task of warming up the crowd. This mostly entailed cajoling people into singing, and, if no one was jumping onstage, taking the mic himself.

That night, no one seemed eager so sing, so Bruce, resigned, had hopped up on stage.

The first song he ever sang was a stupid power ballad he'd heard done about 45243 times before. He didn't even like the song, really; he'd just heard it enough that he thought he could pull it off.

And pull it off he did. He was, as one member of the stunned crowd had said, "fucking amazing."

At the insistence of the audience, Bruce had done an encore. Then another one. All told, he performed five songs before he insisted that someone else take over.

That night, he went home to his shitty apartment and he laid on his bed. He'd spent hours thinking. Music was something he'd never considered, something he'd never had the time or opportunity to think about. But he was good. That was apparent. He was good...and he liked it.

He liked it a lot.

The next day, Bruce had gathered what meager savings he had and he'd gone to the nearest music store. He'd picked up the cheapest guitar they had and slowly, he'd learned to play it.

Within a year, he was in a band.

He'd been performing a gig at a facsimile of an Irish pub when he'd met Tony Stark.

Or rather, been accosted by him.

In between sets, Bruce like to step out and get some water and, if he needed it, a little something extra. He'd been in the process of swallowing a sip of water when someone had punched him in the shoulder.

"Ow—" Bruce had started, turning around, but he'd been interrupted.

"Oh my god, your voice in perfect," said a voice. "Can I have you?"

Bruce had turned around and found himself face-to-face with a guy wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a molecule of caffeine on it and sporting the most pretentious goatee Bruce had ever seen.

Bruce liked him immediately.

"Excuse me?" Bruce had asked.

"Can I have you?" the man repeated. Then he'd stuck out his hand. "Tony Stark. Guitar god and music scout. I need you."

"Um," Bruce had said. "Thanks, but I'm already in a band."

"Your band sucks," Tony had replied factually. "My band is awesome, and needs someone like you. In fact, we need you specifically. Come on. With you, we can make it big."

Bruce had been somewhat taken aback by Tony's brash confidence, and to be honest, he'd also been somewhat charmed by it. Additionally, what Tony was saying was unfortunately right; his band _did _suck. They were a shitty cover band, the likes of which were a dime a dozen. So Bruce had shrugged, awkward. "Er, I guess I could check you guys out."

"Great!" Tony had replied. He'd handed Bruce a piece of paper. "Here's where we practice. Come by around 8 tomorrow night and we'll be there." He paused, then added, "Also, we're called 'The Avengers.' The name is non-negotiable."

And that had been that. Tony had simply bounded away, and Bruce had gone back to perform his second set.

Not wanting to be rude, Bruce had, indeed, stopped by the next night and he'd found that Tony hadn't been lying. His band was amazing.

It was a five piece set, consisting of some of the most talented musicians Bruce had ever heard. On guitar were Tony and his friend Steve Rogers. Bass was a huge blond guy named Thor. Drums was a guy named Clint Barton whose short, spiked blonde hair was dyed half purple. On keyboards/violin/just about any instrument imaginable was a beautiful redheaded woman named Natasha Romanoff.

Together, they sounded tight and clean, working together seamlessly as a team. When they finished performing a song—Natasha sang, with a beautiful alto—all Bruce could say was, "What do you need me for, exactly?"

"Natasha doesn't want to sing forever," Tony said, shrugging his guitar off and setting it on a stand.

Natasha had nodded, stepping away from her keyboards. "Not really my thing, you know?"

Bruce didn't—her voice was amazing—but he'd just nodded. "I guess. If you really want me, I can join."

With that, he'd been in.

Not just in the band, either; he'd suddenly found himself a group of friends. They didn't just practice together; Tony insisted on Mandatory Group Fun Time. And the more they hung out and practiced together, the more Bruce found that he liked these people.

There was Tony, whose irreverence and confidence was matched only by his intelligence and musical talent. There was Clint, who was partially deaf and had, no shit, been in the circus. There was Thor, whose family problems rivaled Bruce's. Steve was an amazing guitar player, an accomplished artist, and the kindest, mostly loyal person Bruce had ever met. Natasha was a bit of a mystery, reluctant to talk about her past but more than willing to listen, to tease the others, and she was probably the most amazingly talented musician Bruce had ever met.

It was new to him. He'd never had friends before, having isolated himself as a child and kept the habit going once he'd gotten to college, and subsequently kicked out. Liking people was a genuinely strange experience, and opening up to them was even weirder.

But he did.

At first, they'd performed mostly songs that Tony had written, but Tony encouraged the others to write, too, and after a while, Bruce did. He wrote like he was dying, like it was his lifeline, and he sang.

The band listened. They processed. And no one judged. Instead, they offered sympathy, best summarized by Tony's, "Dude, that sucks."

Soon, they were doing songs Bruce had written. He found the writing process cathartic. There was something about putting himself out there, about spreading his past out so the whole world could see it, that let him finally start to process it.

Their music proved fairly popular; it blended several different elements for a unique sound, and combined with the lyrics that explored topics ranging from politics to relationships to family drama to trauma and drug use, there was something for everyone to relate to. Soon they had gathered quite the local following, regularly drawing crowds of several hundred people at their gigs.

Then, they'd gotten signed.

It had been something of a surprise.

They'd been performing a gig opening for a much bigger act. It was pretty common for more popular artists to pull some local talent for opening acts, and somehow this semi-famous band had heard of The Avengers.

It ended up being their biggest gig to date, and a few days later, they'd been contacted by Phil Coulson, a talent scout who worked for SHIELD Records.

After that, it had been a whirlwind. They'd gone into the studio and they'd started laying down tracks. They'd started getting some publicity, getting television spots and the like.

For Bruce, that's when it had started to unravel.

He'd been blackout free for years, mostly, he thought, because of his self-medication habit. But with the band's popularity, he was under more stress.

Too much stress.

The first blackout had been after The Avengers' first television spot. Bruce could remember going backstage, getting cleaned up, and then...nothing. Nothing until the next morning, when he'd found himself back at his (new, somewhat nicer) apartment, standing in what had once been his neat, orderly bedroom.

The mess wasn't bad. There were clothes strewn around and a few things had been knocked off the dresser, but the room wasn't destroyed. Just messy.

But Bruce didn't remember doing it. And he didn't know why he _had_.

He'd called Natasha, first, because it felt right. Bruce had thought that if there was a problem that needed to be solved, Natasha would be the one to do it. She was the one who handled the day to day workings of the band, the logistics, the specifics. Tony was the big picture thinker, Natasha managed the minutiae. She was always ready for anything.

And if nothing else, Bruce knew she was a good listener.

She _had _listened, quietly, without interruption, while Bruce rattled off everything he hadn't told anyone. The anxiety, the blackouts, the drugs. The parts he'd left out of his narrative, the parts no one knew.

When Bruce was finished, Natasha had offered him calm, rational advice. "You need to talk to someone."

"I just did," Bruce had snorted, running a hand through his hair.

"You know what I mean," Natasha had replied evenly.

And Bruce did. But he didn't take her advice. He knew it was good advice. But he couldn't do it, not yet.

When it happened again, he'd again gone to Natasha. Bruce trusted her.

Natasha had said, "I'm telling the band." Up front, nothing behind his back. Bruce appreciated that. And he didn't blame her.

The general consensus, at their meeting, was that Bruce needed to talk to someone.

He still didn't. It was one thing to face his past through his music. It was something else entirely to face his own instability.

Then they'd gone on tour to promote the new album.

The new album which was, surprisingly, climbing the charts.

The album, which contained the #1 single in America.

Almost overnight, The Avengers were rockstars, selling out auditoriums and the occasional arena.

And Bruce Banner, age 27, socially awkward introvert and abuse survivor, was not prepared for that.

The first leg of the tour, which lasted almost a year, went...okay. Fame had its benefits, one of which was easy access to the things Bruce though he needed to keep himself sane. He kept himself medicated to the gills, and if he slurred a word or two while he was onstage, no one seemed to notice. He still had women throwing their underwear at him, still had his face plastered on magazine covers, still had paparazzi trying to follow him to the bathroom.

He didn't have a problem.

Still, even with chemical help, Bruce blacked out once, after a particularly huge show. That had been the first time he'd trashed his hotel room. The media chalked it up to a "rockstar hissy fit," and Bruce was too ashamed to correct them.

But the rest of the band knew what it was.

After that, the band took a break. Six months off, in fact, because Tony had insisted that Bruce needed to get his shit together. Exact phrase, in fact.

Bruce had tried to get his shit together. He'd tried to stop using. He looked up reputable psychiatrists. But in the end, he couldn't do it.

He'd failed, utterly.

The second leg of the tour did not go well..

Bruce's drug use flared back up almost immediately. And in addition to the drugs, Bruce started drinking again, desperate to prevent what he knew could happen. He was willing to do anything to disconnect, to stay calm.

But the stress of touring was too much, and he blacked out again. Another hotel room ripped apart. And this time, Bruce had found himself injured. Bruised hands, a knot on his head.

Their record label had started threatening them then. With Bruce in the band, they were a liability. Even if they were insanely popular, SHIELD Records couldn't keep them on if Bruce couldn't exercise some self-control.

If only it were so easy.

Bruce didn't know why he was so _angry _when he was blacked out_, _why he was so _violent_. He wished he remembered, wished he knew what set himself off. All he knew, though, was that he had enough sense to get away from the rest of the world when he was in an episode.

He thanked god for that.

This time, it had only been a couple of weeks since his last blackout. Despite the pills, despite the booze, it was getting worse.

* * *

"I see," said the calm voice on the other end of the line. Natasha, unflappable as always. "What do you want to do about it?"

That, Bruce thought, was a good question.

* * *

**Thanks for reading! Chapter 2 is underway.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hey there!**

**Sorry for the delay in getting this published. I haven't forgotten about it, I promise.**

**Many thanks to skylarkblue for beta-ing this chapter for me!**

**Warnings: drug use.**

* * *

Before Bruce could answer Natasha's very important question, there was a knock on the door. Actually, more like a pounding.

"Shit," Bruce said instead. "There's someone here."

"Tony," Natasha said. "He was looking for you; we were supposed to be on the bus by 12:30."

It was almost 1. "And _you_ weren't looking for me?"

Natasha laughed. "I figured you were running late. You usually are. And you're not really very adventurous, Bruce, I figured you'd show up eventually." She paused. "Tony's impatient, you know that."

Natasha was right on all three counts; Bruce was habitually late (due mostly to being absentminded more than anything else), more likely to hang out on the bus than to go partying, and Tony was impatient to the point of being obnoxious.

Bruce sighed, then said to Natasha, "Okay, I need to get my stuff together and I'll be down ASAP, okay?"

She laughed again. "Don't tell me, tell him." With that, she hung up.

Leaving Bruce to deal with Hurricane Tony, and the hurricane that had hit his room, on his own.

Gingerly, Bruce picked his way over to the door. The pounding had not ceased, and despite Bruce's chemical help, the sound was grating on his already shredded nerves. He looked out the peephole to make sure it was, in fact, Tony trying to bust the door down. Then he opened it.

"Man, where the hell—oh, you look like shit," Tony said. Without any subtlety at all, he craned his neck and looked behind Bruce, taking in the damaged room. "Again?"

Bruce sighed. "Yes. Again." He hung his head, ashamed. He hated this part of himself, hated that he couldn't control it, hated that other people had to see it.

"At this rate," Tony said dryly, pushing past Bruce to better survey the damage, "This tour isn't going to make any money at all."

Bruce couldn't argue. There was broken glass ground into the carpet, feathers everywhere, and half the furniture was in pieces. Putting things back to rights was going to be a several-thousand-dollar endeavor. Which he'd gladly pay out of his own pocket; if nothing else, doing so would let him pretend that money could fix all of his problems. But he knew he wouldn't be paying. The tour was insured, at least for now, and the insurance would cover it.

It was only a matter of time, Bruce figured, until the insurance premiums got so high that SHIELD sent The Avengers packing.

With a sigh, Bruce reluctantly followed Tony into the room. "I know," he said. "We're probably solidly in the red." He pulled his suitcase out from under a pile of bedding so he could start packing. "I'm sorry." He was, too, about everything; about the room, his tardiness, his whole existence.

"I don't care about the money, Bruce," Tony said, toeing at a pile of feathers and broken glass. He sounded, suddenly, tired.

Bruce snorted.

"Okay," Tony corrected himself. "I don't care about the money _that much. _I'm worried about you. This isn't normal."

As if Bruce didn't know that. "Tell me about it." He sifted through debris, trying to find his belongings. It was easier than looking at Tony. He managed to unearth a single sock. "Do you think SHIELD's gonna drop us?"

"They might," Tony replied, frank. "They weren't happy the first two times this happened. And this..."

"Is worse," Bruce finished.

"Yeah," Tony agreed, looking around him at the mess. His eye caught the wallpaper. "Is that...blood?"

Bruce nodded and held up his hand, the one with the skinned, bruised knuckles. "I'm assuming, anyway."

"Jesus." Tony grabbed Bruce's hand to look at it more closely, then looked up at Bruce's face. "What happened to your face?"

Bruce wished he knew. "No idea. I might have hit it on something."

_No shit, Sherlock._

"On purpose?" Tony asked, casual, carefully avoiding eye contact.

The thought had occurred to Bruce, also, but it wasn't like he had answers. "I don't know." He pulled a t-shirt out from under the broken end table. It had been ripped nearly in half, and Bruce let it fall back to the floor. He repeated, "I don't know."

"Hmm," was Tony's noncommittal response. Then, more businesslike, "I'll get Pepper to talk to the hotel management. You get your shit together and head down to the bus."

Bruce nodded. Pepper, aka Virginia "Pepper" Potts, was the tour manager, a no-nonsense woman whose efficiency was matched only by her efficacy. Ms. Potts, as Bruce usually called her, could Get Things Done. She would handle this, like she handled everything else, like she'd handled this shit the first two times. By now, she probably had a damn script for how to deal with this happening.

As Tony left, Bruce finished packing his stuff. His last stop was in the bathroom, where he added all his little orange bottles to the top of his bag. Then, with a rueful look behind him, he slunk out of his room, snuck out a side door, and walked around the building to the bus.

He felt like a criminal.

But then...wasn't he?

"Rough morning?" Clint asked as Bruce slouched up the steps onto the bus. The drummer was sitting in the booth at the front of the bus, already playing some video game or another on the television mounted above it, huge cup of Mountain Dew on the table in front of him. He seemed to be alternating between taking sips of that and sips from an almost equally giant cup of coffee.

Bruce wondered how he was still alive.

"Something like that," he muttered, squeezing past and heading towards his bunk. He'd been awake for less than an hour and he was ready for a nap.

It wasn't to be, though. From the bunk above his, Natasha popped her head down. "You look terrible."

"Thanks," Bruce snorted, hefting his bag onto his bed. He was getting tired of hearing that. After a moment's thought, he dove in after his bag, flopping awkwardly on top of it. It dug into his stomach, but in the grand scheme of the disaster that was his life, Bruce didn't really mind. He just wanted to lie down.

Natasha would not be deterred by something as simple as Bruce's dramatic flopping, though. Bruce had 1.5 blessed seconds of peace before he felt her weight on the bunk next to him. "So. What's your plan?"

Bruce groaned into his pillow. He had been thinking that he'd just lie there, face pressed into his pillow until he suffocated, barring any other options. Unfortunately, to express that to Natasha, he was going to have to remove his face from his pillow and disrupt his plan.

With a sigh, he rolled over, staring at the bottom of Natasha's bunk. "I have no idea."

"What's up?" Steve, who'd presumably just come up from the back of the bus, stopped next to the bunk and peered down.

"It happened again," Natasha said. She was sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, and with great effort, Bruce also pulled himself up so he was sitting.

"Ah," Steve said. Then, succinct and to the point as always, "That sucks."

"I know," Bruce groaned, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his head on them. "I'm sorry, guys, I'm going to get us thrown off this tour—"

Natasha cut him off. "Don't worry about that. Even if we have to cancel the tour, there will be other tours—"

"Not if I get us dropped from the label," Bruce countered, straightening. "We can't—"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it!" Natasha interjected. "If we have to—"

"Do you mind if I say something?" Steve asked. "If you two can stop arguing for a second?"

That shut them both up. Steve almost always had good advice or some insight to offer, like he was wise beyond his years. An old man in a young man's body.

This time was no exception. "I get that you're worried about the tour," he said, "And the record label, but we're not going to abandon you just because things got hard." He shrugged. "I mean, dealing with Tony every day isn't a picnic, but we've all stuck around through that."

That made Bruce laugh.

Steve went on, "And it's not like you're the first person in the world with some, uh, problems." He frowned. "You can get this sorted out and we'll work from there, like Natasha said."

Bruce sighed. "Okay, fine, you've made your point. I just wish I knew what to do."

But that was something he knew he had to decide on his own. And he couldn't do that until he knew what was going to happen. Until he'd heard from Pepper.

* * *

Tony came back to the bus at 1:30. Shortly afterwards, they were on the road. Late, but not catastrophically so. They would make it to their next show on time.

Bruce had managed to extricate himself from his bunk and was sitting in the lounge area at the back of the bus with Thor, Steve, and Natasha when Tony came back. Tony threw his bag on his bunk and yelled, "Hey Little Drummer Boy, band meeting back here!" before heading back to sit with them. He grabbed himself a can of Coke from the fridge and plopped down on Bruce's left side.

He didn't look happy.

A minute later, Clint appeared. "Yo, what's up?"

"So here's the deal," Tony said, diving right in. "We're playing our show tonight and the one tomorrow night. After that, we're done with the tour." He looked at Clint. "By the way, Bruce blacked out again."

"Shit," Clint said, just as Bruce said, "I'm sorry."

Tony waved him off. "We're going to head back to New York, and Bruce, Pepper thinks the label is going to try to pressure you into going to some sort of a residential treatment facility. She thinks it'll placate the hotel owners, stop them from pressing charges."

Bruce's mouth dropped open. "I'm not...rehab? I'm not going to _rehab._"

Under his breath, Clint sang, "Tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no..."

Everyone glared at him; he muttered a quick, "Sorry."

"The point _is,_" Tony stressed, "That if you don't go, the label is going to pressure _us _to kick you out of the band. And the hotel'll probably press charges. Vandalism, destruction of property, something like that."

"Bullshit!" Clint exclaimed.

"Obviously we won't kick Bruce out," Thor spoke up for the first time. "I'd rather leave the label." He crossed his arms. "Like they can tell us what to do."

Bruce imagined that no one in their right mind would ever try to tell Thor what to do; he stood well over six feet tall and had the build of a pro football player, or maybe a god.

Bruce was not so well endowed.

"That's kinda what I thought, too," Tony said, tapping his chin. "But obviously, it's not my place to speak for the band." He looked at Bruce. "Usually that's the frontman's job."

Bruce sighed. Enormously. He wasn't a leader. He had a stage persona, sure, someone he pretended to be while he stood in front of massive crowds of people. But at the end of the day, he happily dropped that mask; he wasn't that bold, brave person any longer than he had to be. Conflict was the bane of his existence, and he was more likely to set his hair on fire while dancing the cancan than he was to actively seek it out. "You want me to talk to them?"

Tony nodded. "If it comes to that. I think we're all with you—" he broke off to survey the affirmative nods— "So if and when the time comes, you can speak for all of us."

"Great," Bruce muttered. Just what he wanted: confrontation. But this was his fuckup and his problem, so he'd have to face it.

"There's another option," Natasha said casually. Too casually. "You could, you know, go to rehab."

Everyone turned to look at her. "What?" she asked. "The label's only going to try to get us to boot him if he doesn't go to rehab. What if he does?"

"Er," Tony said. "I guess...they won't, then? It'd look shitty if they dropped him after he went."

"Exactly," Natasha said.

Bruce frowned. "But you're missing the point. I don't want to go to rehab. Rehab for what, even? I don't _need_—"

"Imma let you finish," Clint interrupted to a chorus of groans. "No, seriously though. Does it matter for what?" He shrugged, then added, "You're so screwed up, they could probably stick you anywhere, for anything."

And instead of finding that offensive, like any normal person would have, Bruce laughed. He laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

When he stopped, he had tears in his eyes, and he wiped the away hastily before he said, "Fine. Okay. I'll go, whatever. Fuck, maybe it'll be good publicity." He sighed.

"All publicity is good publicity," Tony said, sagely. "I'll tell Pepper what you decided."

"You just want a chance to talk to her," Clint joked.

Tony just rolled his eyes, already dialing Pepper's number.

* * *

The news about Bruce's latest mishap broke around 4:00 PM; the headlines were much like he had imagined them. He wondered what the headlines would say soon, once the news about the end of the tour broke.

He wondered what the record company was going to tell the press.

Almost immediately after he'd read the first article detailing the damage to the hotel, he got an email from Pepper, with some options about places he could go. He set to reading about them, swiping through websites on his tablet.

He did okay for a while, kept a level head, considered his options rationally. Soon, though, the anxiety started to build. And when he felt his heart rate going up, Bruce reached into his overnight bag. He argued with himself for a minute over whether he should take anything and, if so, what. He didn't want to have another blackout, though, and when he couldn't calm himself down, he decided on Vicodin again, like that morning.

He figured, in rehab, he wasn't going to get a lot of it. Might as well enjoy while he could.

Dinner, around 6, was an unusually quiet affair. Usually before a show, they were all hyped up, but tonight they ate their respective meals without much action. There was only a small food fight between Thor and Clint, which was abruptly resolved when Natasha was hit with a french fry and threatened to murder them both in their sleep.

By the time they were getting ready for the show, though, things felt more normal. Clint was applying some kind of sculpting wax to his hair to get the purple half to stand up, Natasha was doing a complex series of stretches, Tony was complaining loudly about how Clint's hair product smelled, and Steve and Thor were trying to figure out if their plain black tshirts had somehow gotten swapped. Given that they were both humongous, it was kind of hard to tell.

Bruce, meanwhile, was trading in his glasses for the contacts he preferred to wear on stage. Not for any aesthetic reason, really, it was just annoying having to push his glasses up every 30 seconds. His look on stage was very similar to his look offstage: tshirts and khakis. The only real difference was that, offstage, he tended to layer the tshirts under a button down; onstage, he'd overheat in the first four songs if he did that.

When the opening act was halfway through their set, though, Bruce started to feel nervous again. He was trying hard not to think about what was coming, that the next night was going to be his last show for a while, maybe even his last show ever. But the quickest and easiest way to guarantee you focus on something is trying to forget it, and Bruce found himself distracted.

He grabbed himself a beer, some overpriced microbrew stuff that Tony preferred, and drank it while he watched the openers from the side of the stage. When he was done, though, he still felt wound up, anxious. He grabbed another beer and cracked it, but his mind was elsewhere.

His bag was on the bus. They were driving to their next show straight through the night, so they weren't staying in a hotel. He could just step out back and grab something...

But, suddenly, "Bruce!" Pepper called, striding across the backstage area. "You're going on in half an hour." Then, she stepped in closer. "Did you get the email I sent you?"

Bruce nodded.

"Did you get a chance to read through any of it?"

He nodded again, seemingly rendered mute. He was awkward at the best times, and this certainly wasn't one of those.

Pepper smiled at him, a warm, friendly expression. "Are you okay? If you don't think you can go on tonight, after what happened, we can cancel." The offer was genuine, he could tell.

"No, I'm okay," Bruce said. The idea of canceling 30 minutes before a show felt terrible. "I'm just. Nervous, I guess."

"That's understandable," she replied. "I want you to know that we're behind you on this."

Bruce's incredulity must have shown on his face, because Pepper added, "And that's not just the party line. Okay, it is. But I, personally, am rooting for you, Bruce." She shrugged. "I've worked with a lot of musicians, and a lot of them were insufferable jerks. You're not. You seem like a good guy." With a smile, she added, "Even if you do keep making more paperwork for me."

Bruce looked down and spoke to his shoes, making a conscious effort not to shove his hands into his pockets. "Thanks."

"If you need anything, please don't hesitate to ask. And try to get back to me as soon as possible when you pick a place, okay?" Pepper sounded genuine and concerned. "I want to make sure you're comfortable, wherever you go."

"I will," Bruce replied. "And thanks again."

He was saved from further awkward, uncomfortable interaction by Tony, who bounded up to the pair of them. "Pepper! I was just thinking about you!"

"What a coincidence," Pepper said, her tone instantly wry. "What do you need, Tony?"

Tony dragged Pepper away, chattering on about the arrangements for the abrupt ending of the tour, leaving Bruce mercifully alone for the last few minutes before showtime.

He spent the time pacing, trying to remember to breathe.

Once he was on stage, though, with the crowd screaming in front of him, Bruce's worries were gone. He shoved it all back and focused on the music, the lyrics, the energy of the audience. For almost two hours, he was free.

But all good things must end, and almost as soon as he was offstage, chugging water and dripping sweat, it all came back to him, worse, now, than it had been before. All he could think about was what a failure he was, how he was letting his bandmates down, how he was ruining his big shot at success. How his broken mind would always just take from him, how he'd never be normal, how he'd fail at everything he tried. It spiraled up and up until he could hardly breathe.

And so, ignoring his bandmates, his friends, Bruce got cleaned up as fast as he could and made a beeline back to the bus.

He was there before anyone else, of course, in fact, he'd been so quick that there weren't even that many fans lingering around outside the venue yet. Bruce was reasonably sure that no one had seen him slip onto the bus, and so he went to his bunk and sat down to rifle through the bag he'd left there earlier.

Bruce unscrewed the first bottle he found, barely looking at it to make sure it was what he wanted. Xanax, now; he wanted out of his mind, away from his stupid thoughts. He shook out a bar and threw it into his mouth. He swallowed it with the water he had left from his water bottle and then he laid back and kicked his legs up, crossing his ankles.

As he laid there, waiting for the drug to take hold, he tapped his foot anxiously. Bruce didn't feel like he could relax. His muscles were tense, his head was starting to ache, and his chest felt tight.

He reached over and picked the bottle up again, shook out another bar, and put it in his mouth. He swallowed it dry, too lazy to get up and get a drink.

By the time the rest of the band showed up, Bruce had traveled to the wonderful land of "I Don't Give a Fuck."

It was, he thought, a better destination than "I Destroyed Another Hotel Room."

Now and then, he'd heard his phone ring, but he'd ignored it, too lazy and relaxed to bother picking it up. It didn't occur to him that this might be a problem; he had effectively killed all his worries, and the fact that anyone else might be worried about anything failed to register with him.

Which made his reaction when the rest of the band showed up more understandable.

"That _asshole _better be on this fucking bus," Tony snarled, stomping up the stairs onto the bus. "I swear to god..."

"I'm over heeeere," Bruce stage-whispered from his bunk, completely missing Tony's half-frantic tone of voice. "Shhh, I'm sleeping." He closed his eyes and hummed.

The lights came on, then, illuminating the bus and Bruce, who was spread out on his bunk, content to never move again.

"Jesus, are you kidding me?" Tony asked, coming down the aisle. He stopped next to Bruce's bunk and peered down at him. "Mister "I don't need to go to rehab?"

"You're probably right," Bruce said. "This does NOT support my case. I rescind my previous statements regarding the matter unequivocally."

Someone—Clint, maybe—snickered. Someone else—Natasha, probably—punched him, as evinced by a muffled 'thud' and a pained "OW!"

"We don't laugh at our friends when they're stoned, Clint," Natasha said, as if she were instructing a small child.

"Right," Clint said. "Noted. Geez."

"Jesus," Tony said again. "I mean, I knew you used, we all did, but we've never seen you like...this."

"That is because," Bruce said succinctly, opening his eyes but still unwilling to sit up, "I do not _get _'like this.'" He turned his head so he could see everyone around his bunk. "I just 'self-medicate,'" he said, making lazy air quotes. Then he giggled. "Usually. Not right now."

"Sleep it off," Steve advised, pushing past the rest of the band to his own bunk. "Come on guys, he's okay. He's here and he's fine. Let's go to bed."

Everyone dispersed, slowly, until it was just Natasha standing next to Bruce's bunk. Before she hopped up onto her own, she crouched down next to him. "We're talking about this tomorrow," she said.

And Bruce, in his happy, relaxed state, didn't even care how ominous that sounded.

* * *

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